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O U T PAT I E N T S U R G E R Y M A G A Z I N E O N L I N E | F e b r u a r y 2015
A Phaco Machine
Is it time to replace your facility's phaco system?
I
s there still
a place for
phaco in
the age of the
femtosecond
laser? Short
answer: yes.
Femto has done
nothing to
replace pha-
coemulsifica-
tion. In fact, the
use of lasers to
slice and dice cataracts can make phaco even safer and more effi-
cient, since less ultrasound energy is needed to dissolve the material
and, as a result, less heat is created in the eye. About 40% of laser
cases don't even use ultrasound, they just irrigate and aspirate the
pieces.
Given the continued utility of phaco machines as well as the proven
durability of these workhorses, should the introduction of an all-new,
next-generation system lead you and your cataract surgeons to con-
sider an upgrade? Of course, we're speaking of Alcon's Centurion. The
Centurion phaco machine boasts active fluidics that keep the cham-
ber stable without the need to manually irrigate and aspirate or adjust
the height of an IV pole. Users select a target intraocular pressure and
the machine, by adjusting its compression of a bag of balanced salt
solution and monitoring its flow rate, maintains that level throughout
the procedure. It lets surgeons focus on cataract removal and lens
T H I N K I N G O F B U Y I N G . . .
Jeffrey Whitman, MD
z INTRAOCULAR INSIGHTAsk your surgeons:
Do the latest offerings on the phaco machine mar-
ket radically outperform your current equipment?
